Elizabeth Elstob

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Standard Name: Elstob, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Elstob
Pseudonym: A Person of the Same Sex
Pseudonym: Mrs Frances Smith
EE is noteworthy as the first female scholar in the newly opening field of the Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) language. She was also a translator, a biographer, and a promoter of learning for women and of the study of women's history and culture: in short, a feminist.
Line engraving with portrait of Elizabeth Elstob inside an initial letter G, by Simon Gribelin, from "An English-Saxon Homily on the Birth-day of St. Gregory", 1709, which she translated from Old English. She looks towards the viewer, slightly angled to her left with her head turned to her right. She wears a dress with a low neckline, and her hair is styled with curls framing her forehead and face, while the rest hangs behind her shoulders.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Mary Astell
About the same year MA seems to have earnestly solicited some Learned Ladies of her Acquaintance to contribute their assistance towards Compiling a Book of Natural Philosophy.
Ballard, George. Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain. Editor Perry, Ruth, Wayne State University Press.
426
Apparently she divided the subject up and...
Textual Production Sarah Chapone
SC had an important role in George Ballard 's pioneering work of women's history and women's biography. She introduced him to an even more important influence, Elizabeth Elstob ; she helped in his research; and...
Textual Features Jane Harvey
In addition to quotation from Milton , Pope , and Thomson , this book has a Sterne an flavour, with passages titled from sights (like The Theatre Royal and The Merchants's Court) alternating with...
Textual Features Mary Hays
Though occasionally sketchy (it gives Elizabeth Elstob , for instance, four lines), this is a work of real research, from a consistently feminist point of view. MH investigates the question of women in power with...
Textual Features Elizabeth Montagu
The letters of EM 's youth—to the Duchess of Portland and to her sister Sarah Scott —are sparkling, irreverent, and inventive. Some of these were conveyed via Elizabeth Elstob .
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Her early claim about the...
Reception Anne Bacon
AB 's reputation was known to women from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century who were alert to the historical achievements of their own sex: Bathsua Makin , Elizabeth Elstob , Mary Deverell
Publishing Madeleine de Scudéry
This was translated into English as the first publication by scholar Elizabeth Elstob , 1708.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
politics Susanna Wesley
Her timing may have had to do with the death of the former James II on 3 September 1701, though she had apparently been praying for William III during his reign so far. During the...
Occupation Mary Astell
During the 1690s, long before her involvement with a charity school for poor girls, MA apparently hoped to found a community of serious-minded, self-educating, middle-class, single women, of the kind she recommends in A Serious...
Literary responses Mary Astell
The Tatler fastens on Astell's age, her virginity, and her assumed incompetence in practical or worldly matters. A further attack followed on 3 September, which linked her name with those of Elstob and Manley
Literary responses Catharine Trotter
Anne Kelley traces in detail successive judgements passed on Trotter (later Cockburn) by her contemporaries and by the later eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries,
Kelley, Anne. Catharine Trotter: An Early Modern Writer in the Vanguard of Feminism. Ashgate.
15-45
and delivers her own judgement that she was a radical...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Astell
Among those directly influenced by this work were Judith Drake , Elizabeth Thomas , Mary, Lady Chudleigh , and Elizabeth Elstob .
Perry, Ruth. The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist. University of Chicago Press.
106
George Berkeley 's use of long passages from this text, unattributed, in...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Astell
MA influenced a whole generation of writing women: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu , Mary Chudleigh , Elizabeth Thomas , Judith Drake , Damaris Masham (although Masham's opinions were markedly different), Elizabeth Elstob , and Jane Barker
Intertextuality and Influence Anne Wharton
Elizabeth Elstob cited AW 's poetic achievement along with that of the far better-known Katherine Philips and Anne Finch .
Elstob, Elizabeth. The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue. J. Bowyer and C. King.
xxiv
Friends, Associates Anne Finch
AF enjoyed personal friendships with a number of distinguished men, among them Bishop Thomas Ken . She valued female friendship very highly; women friends figure prominently in her poetry. Lady Catherine Jones , to whom...

Timeline

1 April 1684: George Hickes (later a patron of Elizabeth...

Building item

1 April 1684

George Hickes (later a patron of Elizabeth Elstob ) preached at St Bridget's Church in London a sermon on almsgiving which made particular mention of charities to benefit women, including schools and colleges along the...

1714: Following the death of Mary Kettilby, her...

Building item

1714

Following the death of Mary Kettilby , her executrix published her A Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick and Surgery; for the use of all good wives, tender mothers, and careful nurses.

23 November 1752: George Ballard dated his preface to Memoirs...

Women writers item

23 November 1752

George Ballard dated his preface to Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain . . . (better known as Memoirs of Eminent Ladies); it was published that year.

Texts

Elstob, Elizabeth, and Charles Peake. An Apology for the Study of Northern Antiquities. William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, 1956.
Ælfric, Abbot of Eynesham,. An English-Saxon Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory. Translator Elstob, Elizabeth, W. Bowyer, 1709.
Scudéry, Madeleine de. An Essay Upon Glory. Translator Elstob, Elizabeth, Printed for J. Morphew, 1708.
Elstob, Elizabeth. “Introduction”. An Apology for the Study of Northern Antiquities, edited by Charles Peake, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, 1956, p. i - v.
Elstob, Elizabeth, and George Ballard. “Notes”. Ballard MS 64.
Elstob, Elizabeth. Some Testimonies of Learned Men. W. Bowyer, 1713.
Elstob, Elizabeth. The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue. J. Bowyer and C. King, 1715.